Sargasso
by That.Other.Boleyn.Girl
Summary: Over the years, a childhood friendship between two young boys threatens to become something darker, passionate, and much more destructive. SasuNaru, Three-Shot, AU, yaoi.
1. Part I

**A/N: I've sat on this plot for a while now, and I've only just now decided to write it properly. Beware, people – this story is long, probably the longest One-Shot (Two-Shot? Three?) I've attempted **_**ever**_**, but hopefully that won't mean it loses its impact. **

**Dedicated to: My scrumptious reviewers for **_**Not Ever**_**. Thanks for giving me over 300 reviews so far! You guys are fantastic.**

**Disclaimer: **_**Naruto**_** belongs not to me. This story is intentionally reminiscent of Annie Proulx's **_**Brokeback Mountain**_**, Sonia Orchard's **_**The Virtuoso**_**, and David Guterson's **_**Snow Falling on Cedars**_**.**

**THIS STORY CONTAINS YAOI. It also contains a very healthy (or unhealthy, depending on how you look at it) dose of angst. Read on at your own peril.**

**Please review! If you do, I'll... give you cookies. Somehow. o.O**

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**Sargasso**

0-0-0

_Let us go then, you and I,_

_When the evening is spread out against the sky_

_Like a patient etherised upon a table..._

(T.S. Eliot: _The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_)

0-0-0

It had never been the right sort of love, and when he was alone he would often reflect on this.

On the surface they never admitted this to each other; to be truthful, they never admitted much to anyone. To the world at large they lived separate lives. Neither had really made much of themselves – had each scored small successes in life, but with enough time in between each to almost downplay the fact they were successes at all, so that neither really knew who they were or who they weren't, whether they were moving on in the world or whether the world was simply leaving them behind.

They only saw each other once every month. Sometimes even less than that. It hinged on Sasuke – he was a pianist of sorts – and every now and then he'd have to fly interstate, or overseas, for weeks on end. Once he'd been booked for a tour by his manager and he'd disappeared from Naruto's life for a year and a half. When he'd returned – without warning, just turned up on Naruto's doorstep – neither had spoken a word, had gone upstairs immediately and within five minutes were slamming the headboard of the bed.

Afterward, Naruto had said, "Bastard, you better not do that to me again. I'm getting married to a girl in a month and a bit."

"In a month," Sasuke had repeated with his black eyes closed.

And then they'd gone on as they had always been, as if that admission meant nothing to either of them. It had seemed easier that way – pretending, asking no hard questions of each other, so that Naruto only found out why Sasuke had been gone at all from a newspaper article the very next morning, when he'd gone into the City for stationery supplies.

And it seemed – he'd often reflect on this too – that, with all things considered, he really didn't know much about Sasuke at all. He knew all the surface things: what job he did, what he liked best on his toast for breakfast, the brand of hair gel he used, the peculiar way he had of doing his tie.

He knew those. Almost back-to-front.

But about the things that _mattered_ –

– what he felt about the two of them together, why he never smiled or laughed, why he preferred to turn up unexpectedly in person instead of phoning ahead to give Naruto time to prepare; why he never mentioned his family, the fact that he rarely spoke, why whenever they made love there was always this sense of urgency, desperation, a raw, choked feel that almost (but not entirely) offset the pleasure –

About those things, he knew nothing at all.

Because he'd never asked – he'd never been quite brave enough to ask. Each question had piled up like bricks between them and Naruto was too scared to breach the wall.

0-0-0

If he thought back hard enough he could always remember the way they'd first met, at the orphanage down South many years ago.

He'd been six and Sasuke had been only seven. Strictly speaking, they'd met many times before this, but each time had been fleeting and so didn't quite count. On this day – and he could still imagine it very clearly – it had been raining, very heavily, so that in the playground and the back gardens there were great grey puddles that reached ankle-high whenever you stepped in them with bare feet. It had been cold, too, a thin, wheedling wind that hissed its way through the lavender beds and screeched the old wind vane right and left.

He'd been crying. His father had only just died in hospital. He'd been there for over a year now, stuck in a coma, and only that morning his heart had given out.

Sasuke had found him behind the kitchens.

At that time, Sasuke had been far from good-looking. The main features were there but the nutrition wasn't. Thin, tall for his age, with large, Asiatic black eyes – too large for the thin face – and dark hair uncombed, rough, plastered through with dirt.

The voice, too – not yet mature, still young and slightly thin, as if to echo his face. But then again, it might have just been the wind.

"What are you doing here?"

He'd been too immersed in his own private grief to be friendly or even remotely considerate.

"Go away," he'd said. "Just go away."

"You're crying. Look, you have dirt on your face."

"Go away."

Sasuke had sat down beside him on the kitchen steps. "You're Uzumaki, aren't you?"

"Yes." A sniff. And then the unfortunate reality of owning his father's name hit him and he started crying again, his tiny shoulders shaking a little.

"Stop crying. Boys shouldn't cry. It's not right."

"Go away, then," through a lungful of tears. "I never asked you to stay here and watch me. Just go away, whoever you are."

"I'm Sasuke."

"I don't care. Just go away."

Sasuke had looked at his face very closely. "What's the matter?" he'd said.

"Just go _away_!"

And he remembered it clearly – the fact that Sasuke had obeyed him; had simply stood up from the step beside him and left, crisply and cleanly, hadn't even looked back. He'd been so surprised that he'd actually stopped mid-sob and peered up under his blonde hair to watch, and had watched until Sasuke had rounded the corner and disappeared completely into the house.

No-one had ever listened to him before.

And this he remembered, clearly, as well – that it was only when he'd finally picked himself up to leave, that he saw the small bar of chocolate (slightly squashed) that someone had placed on the step beside him.

0-0-0

They hadn't had much chance to talk after that.

At first it was because Naruto was too shy – kindness was too unfamiliar, too strange, for him and he didn't quite know how to act in the face of it.

Later on it was because circumstances had changed. In the everyday Sasuke carried himself differently; more distant, less familiar, less inclination to talk. Once Naruto had approached him after Arithmetic with the intention of thanking him but had gotten no more than an impassive stare, a blank look on the pale, thin face. He'd backed away feeling slightly confused, but had left it at that. No need to push things further than they already were.

Every now and then they'd pass each other in the dormitory corridors, and there'd be no choice but to speak to each other. When they did they spoke briefly, as if they were afraid of getting caught. Naruto had never quite understood why.

"Geography was a pain," he'd say. "I got the Arctic and the Antarctic mixed up again."

"Hn."

"What about you? I heard Rutherford's a beast."

"He's alright."

And then they'd smile at each other, move away, and retreat back into their own separate spheres.

For the first year or so that was how they'd proceeded, not encroaching on each other, simply acknowledging the other's existence. As time went on they learnt to enjoy these little moments together. Neither really understood why they never spoke to each other outside of those moments – they just knew it was so, and that was how things were.

Once, Naruto had tripped down the stairs carrying a chair he'd snuck out of the orphanage attic and had landed on his right arm, breaking the bone. The doctor had come from the City to set it. It had hurt, hurt terribly, and for the second time in his life, he'd cried.

Sasuke had sat beside his bed for a week.

Neither of them said anything about it – and neither of them had brought it up ever again. It was just something unspoken between them that had happened; as natural as water running down and not running up, as natural as candle-flame pointing towards the sky.

But Naruto remembered, sitting there in bed at night, with the cumbersome new cast on his broken right arm –

– that despite the pain he'd never felt happier: to see Sasuke sitting there in a chair beside him, dark eyes closed and fast asleep.

0-0-0

Three years passed.

In the fourth year a man had come to the orphanage and stayed for a week or so without explanation. Nobody knew just who he was. On the last night of his visit the Headmaster had lined all the boys up in the dining hall and told them to hold out their left and right hands for inspection.

The man had walked down the line, Headmaster at his side, looking at each set of hands in turn.

Every now and then he'd stop in front of one of the boys. He'd reach out a pale, spindly hand and lean in closer, dark eyes glittering coldly like sea glass, probe with spider-like fingertips over an outstretched palm. If he was satisfied with what he saw he'd look at the Headmaster.

And the Headmaster would say, "Tojo Muramatsu", or "Hiroko Ueda", or "Ryu Sugiyama".

And then the man would look irritated, the side of his thin mouth twisting down, and the two of them would move on to the next boy in the line.

Naruto remembered that they'd stopped in front of Sasuke.

By that time Sasuke had been eleven, twelve, maybe. He'd filled out more, but only slightly. The dark eyes no longer bulged out of proportion from his face. The planes of his cheekbones had broadened somewhat, lent a smooth curve down to his jawbone, and then another smooth curve down over his throat.

The man with the cold eyes had looked down at Sasuke's hands – the fingers long, straight, and alabaster-smooth – and the Headmaster had said, without waiting to be prompted:

"That is Sasuke Uchiha, sir."

His companion had blinked. Naruto had watched him from down the line. And then out had come the twin pale spiders, taking hold of Sasuke's fingers and bringing them closer to black eyes. "Did you say Uchiha?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is he somehow related to Itachi Uchiha? Unless of course their surnames are just a coincidence."

"Itachi Uchiha is his brother, I believe."

The sea-glass eyes had widened just slightly, the spiders tightening their twin clutches so that Sasuke's mouth stiffened – in anger or in pain, Naruto hadn't been able to tell. From his own place in the line he'd felt his own hands clench so that his fingernails had bitten deep crescents into his palms.

He'd watched as the man let go of Sasuke's hands and nodded with a slithering smile at the Headmaster.

The next morning, both the man and Sasuke had gone. Naruto had run twice around the orphanage to check. Nobody else had thought too much about it, because Sasuke hadn't made many friends, and at any rate now there was more food to go around. But Naruto alone had felt – hollow, somehow. As if something precious had been taken from him and he didn't know how to fill the space it had left, and on that first morning without Sasuke he'd gone to the back garden and retched and retched into a patch of weeds.

For almost ten years, that hollow feeling stayed with him. He never lost it, let alone forgot it; and by the time he was old enough to know what it was, it was too late anyway, Sasuke was long gone.

0-0-0

On his twenty-first birthday, Naruto had received a card – _Happy birthday. Sasuke._ The address was London.

He'd written back immediately, not understanding his own urgency, and the letter he'd written had been well over four pages. Not all of it had been coherent – since leaving the orphanage, Naruto had taken to drinking – and he was a writer by profession, so naturally none of what he'd written made sense. The letter's tone had fluctuated between accusatory and pleading. A day after sending it, Naruto had wished he hadn't.

The reply had come late. Almost a month had gone past. Naruto had been sitting his living room with his pencil tucked between his teeth – reading Swift and annotating – when the letter had landed on his lap.

The girl – Sakura Haruno – was young, quite pretty, and sat on the arm of his chair as he blinked at her.

"It's for you," she'd said, kissing the side of his face.

He'd looked at the return address and then, with his heart galloping in his chest, he'd tucked the letter behind his book, mumbling something about reading it later, he was busy, and anyway it couldn't be anything important.

Later that night he'd slipped out of bed, taking care not to wake the girl sleeping next to him, crept out into his study and – not waiting to turn on a light – opened Sasuke's letter in the dark.

Sasuke hadn't written anything. But there had been a plane ticket in the envelope, and a ticket to a piano recital in London. Naruto had stared at both, hardly daring to breathe, before shuffling towards a window so that he could read everything again, and again, and again, and again, his fingers shaking, until he'd almost memorised every scrap of writing on anything that Sasuke had sent to him.

When he'd gone back to bed Sakura had sat up next to him and switched on a lamp.

He'd smiled at her confusion and – still shaking a little – leaned forward to kiss her once on the mouth.

"Sorry," he'd said. "I thought you were asleep."

And that had been the extent of it. Sakura was not the type to press things and Naruto had chosen her because of that.

And so, a week later when Naruto left for London – without any explanation, just a sharp kiss on her cheek and a "I'll call you when I get there, sweetheart" – there had been no questions, no wondering why. She'd just smiled at him, nodded, told him to remember his suit jacket. She'd still been smiling when he boarded the plane. And funnily enough, when he came back three months later, that was exactly the image presented to him again, like a movie that had simply been rewound to one spot: just a smile, and a nod, and a glance at his coat.

0-0-0

Over the years Sasuke had become more polished, like a piece of black marble worn smooth by friction. At the age of twenty-two he had lost most of his youth, grown old exponentially, so that the dark eyes were now cold and perpetually jaded, every movement brooding on the movement that had preceded it before.

They had met at the airport in relative silence. Over the long plane trip Naruto had lost most of his excitement, so that only a shuddering confusion remained.

Sasuke had led him silently to the taxi ranks outside.

"I didn't bring a lot of luggage," Naruto had said then, just to say something, anything.

"Hn," the reply had been, and then Sasuke had disappeared inside the car.

The drive had been silent. About ten minutes in it had started to rain, thick grey water that came in horizontal sheets, made the outside sky almost invisible. Every now and then an approaching car would send faint shimmers of yellow light up from the wet bitumen. They weren't travelling very fast – a crawl at best – and it was possible to follow individual water droplets down the passenger window, watch as they rippled in the wind, merged with other drops, then were whipped into nonexistence by the onslaught of more water.

Naruto had looked at Sasuke once or twice – just out of the corner of his eye – but the dark eyes had been bent away, turned outside, the smooth face expressionless.

"I still have the wrapper," Naruto had said eventually.

Sasuke hadn't even turned to him. "Hmm?"

"I still have the wrapper."

"Of what?"

Naruto had cleared his throat, a little awkwardly, knowing that even the taxi driver was watching him now.

"That chocolate bar," he'd said. "Remember?"

The answer had been flat and very toneless: "No."

It was then that Naruto had really started to regret ever writing his letter at all. It had not made much sense when he'd been writing it – and it certainly didn't make any sense now. It was not really that what he'd written was stupid (although it certainly had been); it was more that he'd forgotten how much time had passed, how very long ten years actually was.

And he'd never felt it more acutely than he did now: that although that single moment of kindness meant the world to him, to many others it probably meant nothing at all, as everyday and as common as a raindrop in a storm; just another small nuisance to be swatted aside to make way for the greater view of things.

"You saw me on the kitchen steps. At the orphanage. I'd been crying. Surely you must – "

"I don't remember," Sasuke had cut in then, and Naruto had been too afraid to continue.

They'd reached the apartment in half an hour. The rain had thinned but not disappeared entirely, still fell in fat drops on the waterlogged pavement, made blades of grass twitch on boggy side lawns.

They'd gotten out of the taxi and Sasuke had paid the driver, not hurrying even though he was getting wet, and then they'd made their way to the front door.

"Watch your step," Sasuke had said mechanically as he'd unlocked the door.

"It's a nice place," Naruto had said mechanically in return.

Once inside the rain had muted, drumming distantly on the building's roof. The lobby had been small and cramped. Pale, wet light filtered in slowly, as if it had been dragged up unwillingly from the bottom of the sea.

The apartment was on the fourth floor, and because the elevators had broken down they'd had to use the stairs. Sasuke had picked up Naruto's suitcase without a word and trudged up with it, dragging it up each step, and the whole staircase had resounded with the _thwack_, _thwack _of suitcase wheels on tile.

Halfway up Naruto had tried to take it from him.

"It's alright," he'd said, reaching out for the handle. "I'll do it."

"I've got it," Sasuke had snarled suddenly at him then, jerking the suitcase out of the way.

It had stunned him. It had stunned him so much he'd stopped in his place on the stairs, just staring at Sasuke's back. And it was only when Sasuke had reached the floor above him that he'd finally come to again, restarted his climb on the stairs, followed the _thwack_ of his suitcase up onto the fourth level.

Once there he'd looked out of a grimy high window and noted to himself that it had started raining heavily again, the entire sky puckered up and weeping.

The apartment in itself was clean and tidy; just the sort of place he'd imagined Sasuke in. The kitchen was tight and cramped in beside a dining area and a living room, the latter taken up mostly by a giant piano. Large glass windows facing the apartment's entrance let in a slow trickling of sickly light. The view was indistinct in the rain, but if he squinted Naruto could make out cars. To the right was a doorway, Sasuke's bedroom; and on the living room wall hung a great steel-framed mirror, bland in the non-light, still and grey.

Sasuke had already set his suitcase down. The carpet seemed almost blue-washed in the rain.

"Close the door behind you," Sasuke had said then, not looking at him. "And lock it."

He'd had a bit of trouble finding the lock but in the end had managed it, slid the bolt (_click, clack_) across. When he'd turned back Sasuke had disappeared.

He'd cleared his throat nervously and gone to his suitcase. "Can I use your phone?" he'd called.

"It doesn't work."

"Why not?"

"I can't pay the bills. They cut it off last month."

And sure enough when he'd picked it up the tone was flat, dead, no reception at all. He'd set it back down again slowly.

Sasuke had reappeared from his bedroom then, his suit jacket off, folding the shirt cuffs back on his wrists. The grey light had run in streams down the muscles in his neck. Naruto had watched him, thought strangely that he'd never seen anything in the world so beautiful.

Sasuke had brushed past him. "How long are you going to stay here?"

"I don't – well, the plane ticket you sent me was one-way, so I – "

"You can't stay longer than three months," sharply. "And you'll have to pay for your own ticket home."

The thought of three months had struck him silent at first. It had seemed such a very long time to him. Later, he would realise that it wasn't very long at all – compared with ten years of separation, it really was nothing – but at the time he'd felt a bubbling excitement, something wild that grew in him and threatened to emerge. The notion of three months alone with Sasuke made Naruto feel reckless, strangely light-headed.

"Three months?" he'd breathed as Sasuke busied himself in the kitchen. "That's until – until September!"

Sasuke had said nothing, poured the water in silence.

Naruto had been too exhilarated to notice.

"Three months – _damn_, that's great! – but hang on, you haven't told me how you are yet. It's been – ten years? Ten years. Sasuke, you bastard, you never wrote. Or phoned, for that matter. After you left it was if you'd dropped off the surface of the earth. And then when you sent that birthday card – I was so shocked – I thought you'd forgotten me or something – "

"I hadn't," Sasuke had put in then, very calmly. Later Naruto would reflect that he'd been _too_ calm.

"Well, you sure had me convinced that you had. You bastard!" and he'd laughed, throwing himself onto Sasuke's couch. "Great view, by the way. Pity it's raining."

"It rains too much."

"I like rain. It always makes me feel – fresh, or something."

Sasuke hadn't replied to that either. Instead, he'd brought the two mugs of tea over and set them on the carpet beside the couch. Both mugs were old and slightly chipped. And then he'd sat down opposite Naruto, one elbow on the armrest, leaning his chin on his knuckles.

Naruto had cracked open one eye and grinned. "Where do I put the suitcase then?"

"There's only one bed," Sasuke had said.

"That's alright. I'll sleep on this couch."

"It gets cold at night. The windows don't close properly."

"If that happens then I'll snuggle up with you on the bed to keep warm. How does that sound?" he'd said playfully, too full of boyish happiness to let anything dampen him.

To his surprise Sasuke had stood then, rather abruptly, gone and picked up his suitcase from where it sat on the carpet. He'd sat up just in time to see Sasuke turn for the bedroom.

"I'll sleep on the couch," Sasuke had said coldly.

"No, no, I was just kidding," Naruto had said then, jumping up and grabbing at the suitcase handle. "Don't stress, I'll – "

For a moment then, Naruto's hand brushed the back of Sasuke's. And then suddenly – to Naruto's surprise – Sasuke had yanked himself away, a repetition of what had happened on the stairs, except this time it was so pronounced that the suitcase banged back into the living room wall, making a sound like a thunderclap.

They'd stopped and stared at each other for a very long time.

"I'll sleep on the couch," Sasuke had repeated at last, and this time his tone had been colder than ice.

There had been something in his voice that had warned Naruto not to argue. And for once in his life Naruto hadn't – just sat back on the couch in silence, listening as Sasuke put his suitcase away. Later he would wonder what it was he'd done wrong, but he never managed to come up with a plausible answer.

When Sasuke had come back they'd changed the topic. Both were determined to speak of something else.

No need to push things further than they already were.

0-0-0

As the days went by slowly Naruto's excitement wore away, in spits and spatters so that he never noticed it was fading, until at last after a month he looked at himself in the mirror and realised with a kind of jarring surprise that it had disappeared, all of it, not even a crumb was left.

It had not entirely been Sasuke's fault. The piano recital they'd gone to in the first week, but Naruto didn't know music, so it had all flown over his head. In the end they'd left the concert early, both knowing there was no point in pretending any further.

That night they'd walked back home in the rain.

They rarely talked. When they did, Naruto did most of the talking. Afterwards, he'd always feel foolish however, as if he'd opened his mouth too much and too soon. Sasuke seemed capable of a religious silence, not even breaking it when confronted with blatant questions. More than once Naruto found himself envying that flawless self-control, and yet at the same time despairing of it thoroughly.

Sometime in the second month, the beginning of July, Naruto had gotten a letter from Sakura.

It was mostly template – how the weather was, how their friends were, how good it was to see the flowers coming out. She was missing him, terribly. When was he coming back? And why on earth hadn't he called her yet?

He'd written back cursorily, explained the lack of telephone line. Added that he missed her as well, he'd be back as soon as he could, but not yet; and signed his name after writing "I love you".

Sasuke had stood behind him as he wrote.

When he'd finished he'd turned to find an envelope and stamp and Sasuke had been there, dark eyes watching, not saying a word.

He'd smiled and in response Sasuke had looked away.

"I'll find you an envelope," Sasuke had said, very evenly. "I'll post it for you when I go out tomorrow morning."

But that night Naruto had woken to the sound of wind rushing, and had gotten up out of bed to peer into the living room. Sasuke had opened all of the glass windows and was staring out into the grey-lit sky. Naruto had thought it strange, but hadn't said a word – because down those pale cheeks were two wet trails of silver, silent in the way that Sasuke always was.

0-0-0

Sometimes, in the afternoons when the sun came syrupy and thick through the apartment windows and cast a soporific air over everything, Sasuke would play the piano.

Naruto never listened. He knew deep inside that although Sasuke had never told him not to, nonetheless it was expected of him anyway. As a writer he knew how irritating it was to have someone sitting there watching while he worked. As a matter of principle, on those quaint afternoons, Naruto would go out of the apartment silently and wander London until the sun went down.

He had discovered many things that way. Standing at a sidewalk newspaper stand, he'd found Sasuke's picture in _The London Times_. It had seemed to him then, thumbing through the copy, rummaging around his pockets for spare change, that it was almost frightening how little he knew of this man; and wondered, briefly, whether Sasuke felt the same towards him.

Regarding Sasuke's piano career, Naruto had only enquired about it once.

It had been at breakfast sometime in the second week. Watching Sasuke fry bacon in a pan, he'd said, "So you've been playing the piano all these ten years?"

Sasuke had turned from him to get plates without saying a word.

Used to this by now, though it had never ceased to make him uncomfortable, Naruto had leaned against the counter and tried again.

"I mean, you never told me who that man was. Do you remember? That man who came to the orphanage and took you away. Who was that, anyway? He looked like a creep."

"I don't remember."

Naruto had stared at his back. "What? What do you mean, you don't remember?"

"It was ten years ago, Naruto." The back straightened, and two plates were placed neatly on the bench-top. "I don't remember everything that's happened since then."

"I'm not asking about everything. I'm asking about – "

Sasuke had not looked at him, had slid the bacon out of the pan in the fastidious manner Naruto had come to expect. "He taught me piano for two years, that's all. I don't remember his name."

"You have a pretty selective memory."

That had earned him a glare. He had not been expecting it, and somehow the gesture had made him smile. He'd stood there in Sasuke's kitchen, grinning crazily, until finally Sasuke had turned away again and taken the two filled plates to the dining room table.

He'd followed. The early morning light had spilled out from the windows onto Sasuke's hair and he'd noted this silently to himself as he'd sat.

They'd eaten quietly. Afterwards, putting their dirty plates in the sink, Naruto had pressed the issue again.

"Where did he take you, then? After you left. Did you come here? To London?"

"Hn."

"Is that supposed to be a yes or a no?"

Sasuke had stepped around him carefully and headed towards the bedroom. "Why do you want to know, Naruto?"

"Because I'm curious, that's why. I've told you everything about what _I've_ done these ten years, now it's your turn to tell me what _you've_ done."

"I never asked you about anything. You volunteered the information yourself."

"Yes I did, I know that. I told you because I _wanted_ to tell you, Sasuke."

"Why?"

Naruto had felt slightly frustrated that such a question even needed to be asked.

"You know why, Sasuke. Ten years – that's a long time. I've missed you."

At those three words Sasuke's shoulders had stiffened, just imperceptibly, and after that had refused to say anything more. During the entire course of the remaining morning he had not uttered a single syllable, despite Naruto's attempts to coax out more answers. In the end, it had become a battle of wills; and Naruto had not been trained in such warfare. In the afternoon he'd given up, brought up other less sensitive things, and gradually Sasuke had warmed again.

And so, standing on the sidewalk with _The London Times_ under his arm, squinting into the rain that hurled against his eyes and made the entire world grey and indeterminable, Naruto had thought to himself that, strangely, ten years had somehow managed to reverse things.

Ten years ago, on the orphanage kitchen steps, it had been Sasuke trying to reach an understanding of his heart. And now, ten years later, it was him that was reaching; but every time he tried his fingers closed around nothing, just the empty space where Sasuke's heart should have been.

0-0-0

In the end it had been the rain that had saved them.

The last week of Naruto's three-month stay had been impossibly wet, so that even at night the storm-clouds stayed furrowed in the fading sky, waiting for a new day to renew the assault. Even the light from the sunsets had become diluted, the orange beams swimming in the humid air. Laundry took several days to dry. When they did they retained the smell of the rain, stifling and sour, present in everything.

On the Wednesday the two of them had sat together on the living room couches, waiting for the water to boil. The leaking windows had left wet patches on the carpet.

The rain had made Naruto feel restless. He'd found it very hard to sit still. With the weather so wet it was impossible to go out, but staying inside the apartment had made him feel suffocated.

When the water did boil it was with a loud, wailing shriek. Sasuke had left to take the kettle off. And out of a compulsion to do something other than just sit there, Naruto had followed him, then changed his mind halfway and sat down at the opened piano instead.

Sasuke hadn't noticed until Naruto played the first note.

Then he'd looked up sharply. Given that glare again.

"Don't touch that," he'd snapped, manoeuvring the kettle. "You'll break it."

"What, the piano?" And in defiance Naruto had pressed the same key again. "How do you break a piano, anyway?"

"By playing it in the wrong way."

"But I'm not playing it in the wrong way. I'm just pressing one key."

"Then don't press it."

"Can you teach me a tune? I don't mind what. Greensleeves, even."

The steam from the tea cups had risen and swirled for a moment around Sasuke's neck, dissolved like grey sashes into the air. Sasuke had put the kettle down irritably.

"I don't know Greensleeves."

"Then teach me something you know."

"They're too difficult. You won't be able to play them properly."

"Then I'll just keeping playing your piano in the wrong way, and if it breaks then it'll be your own fault, so don't blame me."

Sasuke had come to the piano then, still with the irritable look on his face, and taken one look at Naruto's hands splayed out on the keyboard before moving away quickly as if something had burned him.

"I can't teach you," he'd said then, abruptly.

Naruto had stared. "Why not?"

"I just can't."

"I'm not that stupid," Naruto had said, misunderstanding. "I learn quickly. Just show me what to do."

Sasuke had stood with his back to Naruto for a long time, not moving. With the rain behind him his figure had glowed an eerie blue-grey. And then finally he'd turned back around, perfectly composed, and moved to stand beside the piano.

His eyes had been strangely shuttered, as if to keep something buried within them.

"Fine," he'd said briskly. "Put your hands on the keys. No, just the right hand. Now curl the fingers – not that much – imagine that your hand is a spider, with your palm sitting on a tennis ball. No, you're arching too high. Now your wrists are too low. You've got to keep them above the keybed."

"Like this?" Naruto had said, his five fingers scrunched up over only four keys.

"No," Sasuke had snapped. "Spread your fingers out a bit. Your natural reach should be about five or six keys. Not four."

"I thought you said I had to keep my wrists up."

"I did."

"But if I spread out my fingers my wrists go down."

"There's such a thing as an intermediate, you know," Sasuke had pointed out, gesturing with an irritable jerk of the head.

"But then I can't lift any of my fingers, Sasuke."

"Don't flatten your palm like that, then. And I said five keys, not eight. You don't need to stretch your fingers out like that."

"I don't know what you're talking abo – "

"Oh, here, you idiot."

And then Sasuke had leaned over and, with ivory-cool fingers, adjusted Naruto's wrist into position. Skin had met skin for about two seconds. (Naruto could still remember this clearly.) And at the slight touch he remembered too that he had frozen momentarily – unprepared – Sasuke's fingers had felt so _strange_ – and it had only been later, replaying the scene over in his mind, that he'd realised why.

It was because that moment – two seconds, as it were – had been the first time in the entire two-months-and-a-bit that he'd been there, that Sasuke had actually physically _touched_ _him_.

Before there had been near misses. Naruto, with his flinging limbs, moving through the apartment like a localised hurricane; and Sasuke, subtly but still ever-so-noticeably, dodging each potential touch, each graze of the fingers. It had gotten to the point where Sasuke had even stopped passing things to Naruto directly, preferring to place teacups down on tables for Naruto to pick up himself instead.

Over the three months, Naruto had gotten used to it. Had accepted it in the same way that one must accept bad weather, must accept an approaching thunderstorm: something undesirable, but ultimately something unalterable as well.

Accepted it – as just another change that ten years apart had created; just another instance of widening water.

That first bridging touch had shot through him like fire.

Afterward, they'd gone on pretending that it hadn't happened at all. Sasuke had retreated back to his original position near the piano, arms folded tightly across his chest, as if to consciously prevent a relapse in judgement.

"Now your hand's in the right place," he'd said. "Now you can – now you can play."

But for the next ten minutes or so Naruto had felt giddy, almost delirious, rooted to the earth only by the keys beneath his fingers. At times he'd almost felt sick, the way his heart had threatened to leap out of his throat; and something deep within him had been beating too, not quite his heart but something similar, so loudly that he could hear every rush of the blood in his ears.

And he'd wondered – if Sasuke had felt the same.

Wondered if – somehow, somewhere, buried behind the black eyes – there _was_ something beating as well, something that wanted what he himself wanted, that felt the _rightness_ of who they were, and what they were to each other –

– was it even possible to hope that way?

"Sasuke," he remembered saying at that moment: "Sasuke, I – "

But what he'd meant to say ("_Sasuke, I think I love –_ ") had not happened; had not survived to meet the air. The lights had blinked out short of it. A tree in the suburbs had fallen on some powerlines, and plunged the city into darkness again; and Naruto had been too afraid to take the chance, which by then had passed beyond him anyway, washed away and diluted by the rain.

* * *

_And indeed there will be time_

_To wonder, 'Do I dare?' and, 'Do I dare?'..._

_Do I dare_

_Disturb the universe?_

(T.S. Eliot: _The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_)

* * *

In the distorted, lurid way a dream or a memory which has been revisited too often will appear to a mind, so did Naruto's thoughts of that night fold in upon itself, become technicolour and vague, impossible to pin down.

When the power had shorted out, the two of them had just stayed there – Naruto with six precious words withering silently on his lips – the storm raging outside, throwing itself against windows, so that the view from their apartment showed a heaving, black, lightless maze of buildings, with the confused and stuttering headlights of cars in between them, weaving like creatures forgotten their place in the world; and the entire apartment changing, grey transient outlines of everyday objects (a couch, a lampshade, the handle of a cup) becoming eerie echoes of other undisclosed things, so that the black and the white on the keys of the piano merged into one and could not be told apart –

It had not been possible, in that alien world, to speak.

Instead, Sasuke had tipped his head; just once; at Naruto's fingers on the keys: wordless, because it had not been necessary to say it.

_Play._

And Naruto had. Just one note – the keys foreign beneath his hands – and it had come out flat, a little deadened, too blank; gone sour by the stifling heat of having been kept within his heart for so long.

_Play._

Again: but Sasuke had moved closer this time, and the note that rang out had had a little more hope, a little more light, a little more colour; but still not enough to keep it from fading.

_Play._

And Naruto remembered thinking – how different Sasuke had looked in the dark; how the shuttered look he'd always had now resembled something closer to pain, something sour and stifled and yearning as well, that same something (two wet trails) that had run down pale cheeks one moonlit night –

_Play..._

Sasuke had moved behind Naruto, standing so that his stomach pressed against the other's back.

And then, in the dark, he'd placed his hand on top of Naruto's – slowly pressed a single key – and the note, the result of two hands placed together, had rung clean in the air, excruciatingly beautiful, but terrifyingly brief.

They'd kissed.

Soft and warm; and then they'd pulled apart, stared at each other, and in silence (because no words needed to be said) they'd come together again, kissed a second time.

Later, when they'd moved to the bed – not rushing, keeping every movement slow, as if by doing so they could make the moment of weakness last longer – they'd sunk into the mattress together without ever uttering a single word.

The rain, cold and non-judgemental, had passed them by and left them to love in silence.

0-0-0

Although afterward neither had brought up the subject again, both had known exactly how things were to be from then on.

In the few remaining days left to them they'd stayed in the apartment, not venturing out even when all the food was gone, preferring to lie entangled on the sheets and sleep the hunger off. The sex they'd let happen, never acknowledged it openly; both knew that what they had was so fragile that one misplaced word would sever it entirely. It was better to pretend. Better to linger on things that could be reversed, dole out words that could easily be taken back again.

The night before Naruto was to fly out of London Sasuke had sat on the mattress of the bed, watching as the other packed silently into the suitcase.

And he'd said, so quietly Naruto had almost missed it: "This is nothing."

Naruto had turned. "What did you say?"

"This is nothing. What happened – it's nothing, there's nothing between us."

"Of course," Naruto had said then, a little too quickly. "We just hadn't seen each other in ten years, that's all. Just something that happened. From tomorrow on we'll never speak of it again. It's nothing at all."

"Of course," Sasuke had repeated. "It's nothing at all."

And then Naruto had gone back to his packing, and neither had said a single word more; just left things as they had always been between them, another silence that had swallowed up everything that the two of them were.

Yes; it was infinitely better to just pretend.

0-0-0

Naruto had left Heathrow Airport the next morning with a terrible weight in his stomach and a feeling that he had not been true to himself. Sitting in the window seat and looking down onto a diminishing London, he'd felt for the first time how small he was, how impossible to guess where Sasuke now was in the laid-out labyrinth that was London City.

Sakura had been waiting for him when he landed.

She'd had Starbucks in one hand and a bag in the other. The coffee she'd passed to Naruto without a word. He'd taken a sip. It was already cold.

"How was the trip?" she'd asked when they were in the taxi.

"Great," he'd said. "Yeah, it was really great."

"You only called me once, and you only wrote me twice. I figured you must have been very busy."

"Yeah," Naruto had said, not quite listening.

"Where did he take you?" And she hadn't looked at him the entire time, was now fixing her lipstick in the rear-view mirror. "You must have seen all the tourist spots. Trafalgar Square, perhaps."

Naruto had thought of the piano and the relentless rain, the arch of two bodies on a tiny, cramped bed.

"No," he'd said. "It rained too much."

She'd looked at him then. There was a blandness in the pretty green of her eyes.

"I hate rain," she'd said then. "What did you say your friend's name was, again?"

"Sasuke Uchiha," Naruto had said.

She'd nodded cursorily. Not quite listening. Her fingers had dug about in her bag for something.

"A nice name," she'd said, aimless. "Sasuke. Quite nice."

And then she'd set about applying mascara to her eyes, while Naruto had sat silent in the taxi beside her.

* * *

**A/N: I'm aiming for an atmosphere of... silent despair, if that makes sense. A disturbed sort of silence. The feeling that I get when I read **_**Brokeback Mountain**_** – that's the emotion I'm aiming to bring out. Did it work? I wonder...**

**Anyway. Review! Please review, or else I'll never get this finished...**


	2. Part II

**A/N: Thank-you for all the feedback for Part I, it really made my day! **

**A splendiferous thanks especially to those whom reviewed: hitsuji-kun, OvenBased, blueandorangesky10, gossameryly, valdas, Bitter Faerie, Positively (I. Love. You. ^^), ..., muymuy, LynLin, left-alone, DarkestFlameUchiha, Heaven Cobra, Skyla[dot]Nightfox, Shinobi Mi-chan, ForgottenPassword, satans-sweety, and Kochou-Yuki-Sakura!**

**I got one or two enquiries last Chapter about whether the title of this story – **_**Sargasso**_** – comes from Jean Rhys' **_**Wide Sargasso Sea**_**. No, it doesn't, actually; it comes from David Malouf's poem **_**At My Grandmother's**_**. The significance of **_**Sargasso **_**becomes more apparent in the next Chapter.**

**Anyway, hope you like my work this time! Please don't forget to review, my darlings! *beams***

* * *

_The memory throws up high and dry_

_A crowd of twisted things;_

_A twisted branch upon the beach_

_Eaten smooth, and polished_

_As if the world gave up_

_The secret of its skeleton..._

(T.S. Eliot: _Rhapsody on a Windy Night_)

* * *

For at least six months afterward Naruto had tried to call him, but every time Sasuke's number had simply bounced back. It didn't exist, the polite woman manning the lines had told him. Maybe Naruto had written it down wrong.

He'd admitted that that was probably the problem, apologised, hung up, and then tried again the week after. Again, that same woman telling him he'd entered a wrong number. Again he'd hang up, tell himself he wouldn't try it again, but then the next week would arrive and he'd be filled with an inexplicable hope that perhaps this time Sasuke would be there, this time Sasuke would pick up the phone.

He'd written letters, too, too many to count. One night he'd taken too much whiskey and had written (and posted) five letters at once. No reply had ever come, but still he'd kept writing them anyway. It had felt better to do something other than sit there and wait.

Between him and Sakura had come a drifting separation, not really any fighting but just an overtaking strangeness. He'd begun to forget crucial things about her. She'd begun to question his lack of productivity. They had a living to make, she'd point out over breakfast, and Naruto hadn't written anything in at least a whole year.

"You're always in your study," she'd said one such morning. "But you never write anything."

"I write all the time," Naruto had said then, a little angrily.

"You told me last year you'd write a novel dedicated to me, and it still hasn't happened."

"Novels don't just write themselves, Sakura. They take _time_."

"How much of it have you written, then?"

Naruto had stuttered, stammered about for a lie. "I think – at least – well, I've written quite a few chapters of it already, but the plot is still – "

" – in progress?" Sakura had prompted, buttering some toast.

"Yes, that's it. Yes. In progress."

"Can I read what you've written so far, then?"

"No," Naruto had said quickly, thinking of the stack of discarded letters in his second desk drawer. "I – I don't want you to read the unfinished drafts yet."

Sakura had looked up at him.

"Why not?" she'd asked. "You used to let me read them all the time."

"Because – " And nothing had come to follow that, so he'd sat there staring at his plate for a while, trying to formulate a reason to validate what he'd said. "Because – I want it to be a surprise, Sakura. It's not like anything I've ever written before. I don't want you to read it until it comes out in print."

"When will that be?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe soon."

Sakura had taken a bite of the toast, washed it down with a mouthful of Earl Grey tea. "I hope it's soon, Naruto. I'm running out of money to support you."

"It'll be soon," Naruto had promised, with a drowning feeling in his lungs.

"You know my father won't let you have any of my inheritance until we're married."

He had known what it was that she'd wanted, then. The drowning feeling had intensified. But still he'd said "Of course", nonchalantly, and gone on eating as if nothing had happened.

That night he'd gone up to his study with vodka, and had woken hung-over the next morning with his head on the desk. He hadn't been able to remember what he'd been doing, or exactly what he'd been thinking of the night before. All he'd known was that he'd found on the desk underneath him two more letters to Sasuke that had written themselves, the writing his own and utterly illegible, the ink splotched and distorted by the splatter of tears.

0-0-0

Naruto had married Sakura Haruno at the beginning of Autumn that very year.

The ceremony had been very small; Sakura was one to show her contentment quietly, a satisfied cat stretching out in the sun. There hadn't been anything triumphant about her but Naruto had felt her silent victory all the same.

It turned out that the inheritance was actually quite large. Over the ensuing months they'd moved to a larger apartment, one that had overlooked the Harbour; they'd purchased their own car, a Mercedes Benz. They'd dined out more, and in time Naruto had begun to expect fine dining, fine wine. Their spending had become more and more extravagant. Sakura had stopped asking about Naruto's novels.

Naruto had been glad for the distraction. At night, with Sakura's body beneath him and her moans the only sound falling in their bedroom, he'd closed his eyes and tried not to think.

Thinking had always made things harder.

Eventually, over the months and the years, his letters to Sasuke had petered out. The calls had stopped too, his hunger for something he couldn't even name acting itself out in him instead via unorthodox ways. He'd sleep with Sakura and then, when she laid herself back down on the mattress, panting, a thin sheen of sweat on her collarbones, he'd leave her bed feeling disgusted with himself.

"I love you, Naruto," she'd say as he left her; always the same line, like a worn-out actress.

And he'd say, over his shoulder, "Go to sleep, Sakura."

Some nights he'd slip out of the house once Sakura was asleep. On those nights, he'd wander about through the empty streets, much in the same manner that he'd once done in London. Every now and then he'd stop in the circle of a streetlamp, close his eyes, and conjure up the feeling of Sasuke's fingertips on his skin; and then, because each time he did so a little more of the memory slipped away from him, he'd go in desperation to a brothel to rediscover himself. Afterwards, he'd always feel better and worse.

Once, Sakura had caught him coming home. He'd entered the house at a little past three, with the scent of cheap perfume cloying to his clothes.

She'd been sitting in the kitchen with only one light on, a mug of Earl Grey cupped in her two hands.

"Naruto," she'd said as he'd opened the door.

He hadn't been surprised. He hadn't even felt guilty.

"Sakura," he'd said, and leaned himself in the doorway.

She hadn't looked at him. "Where have you been tonight?"

"To the Viper Room."

"A brothel?"

"Yes," he'd said.

She'd put her mug down, folded her hands in her lap. And then she'd stared at her fingers, her perfectly manicured fingers, and then she'd said, "Don't I make you happy?"

Naruto had wanted to say, _No, you don't_. But the words had come out as, "Yes, you do."

"Then why did you go to a – ?"

"I don't know." But really he had, he had.

"Don't you love me?"

_I don't._ "Of course I do."

"But you never say it, Naruto."

He'd decided then, standing in the doorway, that the reason why he'd never been able to love her was that she'd always been constantly seeking confirmation of it. She didn't realise that his silence meant something, had she only bothered herself to listen.

"Why do you need me to say it? Isn't it enough that I feel it?"

"But I don't think you feel it," she'd told him then. "I don't think you feel anything at all, Naruto."

He'd had no real reply to that. So instead he'd simply turned away and left her, turning off the light in the kitchen as he went.

0-0-0

From that night on they'd slept in separate rooms, never touched each other unless absolutely necessary. Although neither had spoken of it, to both such an arrangement had brought a quiet relief; and Sakura had started going out more often, only spending a few hours at the house each day, visiting friends, going to parties, to the opera, meeting new people.

She'd say, in the afternoons with her eyes overcast with make-up, and an expensive new shawl spread out over her shoulders: "I'm going out for tonight with some people, Naruto."

And he'd say, not looking up from his book: "Of course."

And she'd say: "I won't be back until tomorrow."

And then he would smile at her, and she would smile faintly back, and as he watched her go the scent of her perfume would linger, settling into the stale evening air.

As the months went on they'd settled into a rhythm. They'd realised, early on, that such was the only manner of maintaining their marriage. It wasn't really a marriage – just a mutual convenience, each using the other as a stepping stone, although the rare times they'd argued Sakura had had the advantage, because in the end it was her who controlled the money and she never ceased to point that out.

"You're the man of the house," she'd say to him on these occasions, calmly. "And yet you never bring in a single cent. I pay for everything out of my own inheritance."

"You married me so you could _get_ at your inheritance," he'd tell her then, his straight jaw clenching.

She'd fix him with her glassy green stare.

"And you married me so you wouldn't have to work," she'd say.

And each would recognise the truth of the other's statement, and invariably with that recognition the argument would end. It was truth, but it was old news: nothing new had come of it. They'd both known it, and they'd both known it for a very long time – and yet they'd both signed the marriage contract anyway, because it was easier (like always) to pretend the truth wasn't there.

0-0-0

In the third year of his marriage, sometime in July, Naruto had passed a billboard on his way to the train station.

It had read the full name – _Sasuke Uchiha_. The letters had been black on a deep purple background. Naruto had paused on the grey cement pavement, staring up at that face for at least five minutes. And then a woman had come out of a sidewalk cafe, asking him in hushed tones if he was alright, and he'd had no choice but to smile, to move on.

By the time he'd reached the train station at last, his hands had been shaking so hard that when he'd tried to hand over his fare – two fifties, three twenties, a ten cent piece – the coins had rattled like a handful of bones.

The girl at the ticket booth had stared.

He'd tried to smile. "I'm just cold," he'd said.

0-0-0

He'd found out some time later, through a tabloid magazine, that Sasuke had married an Ino Yamanaka.

The news hadn't really come as a surprise; nor had it hurt him, in the way that he'd expected it to hurt. After all, he'd married Sakura Haruno. It did not seem farfetched that Sasuke would do the same. He'd stood at the newspaper stand, chewing on his bottom lip, and the pretty young face (all blonde hair and blue eyes) had stared up at him, petulantly, as if to say: _Do you see?_

Later that night, when he'd come home, he'd found Sakura sitting in his bedroom in an evening gown, removing her hairpins in front of a mirror.

She'd been delicate about it, her twin arms raised up, the bare skin glowing like an Impressionist painting.

"You're home," she'd said, not looking up.

"So are you," he'd pointed out, too worn for surprise.

"_La Traviata_ finished early." And the pins had come out, glistening in the lamplight, placed neatly on a table. "I didn't feel like staying for cocktails. Or for a round of _Madama Butterfly_. Two tragic operas in one night can ruin a girl's complexion, you know."

The feeble joke hadn't stirred him, although he'd realised with a numb sort of surprise that a great many others would have found it amusing.

"Mmm," he'd said, to cover it up.

"How was your night? Have you had dinner yet?"

"I ate out."

Her voice had been pleasant. "That's nice."

He'd waited patiently for her to leave his room, but she hadn't hurried, combing her hair out onto her shoulders. He'd noticed that there were twin diamonds in her ears. They'd blinked at him mournfully from under her hair.

"I was just thinking," she'd said after a brief pause. "As I drove home from the opera just then, I saw a billboard next to the train station – a piano concert, or something." When he hadn't responded, she'd said, "What did you say your childhood friend's name was? The one you visited in London last year or something?"

The ache had drummed a tattoo in his chest. "Sasuke Uchiha."

"That's right. Well, he's giving a concert – you never told me he played the piano, by the way – he's giving it at the City Hall next Saturday. I can get the two of us tickets, if you want."

Naruto had said nothing, folded his arms on his chest.

Finally, she'd looked at him, the pins in her hand. She'd noticed the closeted look on his face.

"Unless you'd rather not go?" she'd asked him mildly.

"Maybe," Naruto had said. "But get the tickets anyway."

0-0-0

As it had turned out, Sasuke played very well. Sitting in the last row of seats, Naruto had watched him step onto the stage in a well-cut, expensive black suit, his figure stark and alone against the white of the wall.

Naruto had realised then how handsome Sasuke had become. Unexpected success had made Sasuke beautiful. The arms, when they moved, had been as fluid as water and the chin high and noble, the eyes still and black. There hadn't been a smile on the familiar lips but a cold professionalism, a crisp winter morning. Naruto had wanted to go up to him on the stage and place a wondering finger on his skin, just to make sure that he wasn't all stone.

Beside him, Sakura had sat in a trench coat and stockings. She'd leaned closer to him to whisper.

"Is it him? He looks a bit older than you."

Naruto had given a wordless nod and watched as Sasuke seated himself at the piano.

"You'll introduce us, won't you?" Sakura had pressed in a murmur.

The music had been very reserved, and although Naruto hadn't understood any of it he'd nonetheless felt within it a heaviness, a meaning. The black of Sasuke's suit-sleeves and the black of the grand piano had melted into one in his mind, become inseparable. When the first piece was over the crowd had clapped without waiting for the silence to settle. Naruto alone had mourned for its loss. There had been something fragile in the fall of the last note, and Naruto had felt uncomfortable disturbing it so soon.

During the applause, Sakura had leaned over again and whispered, "A bit too romantic for a Bach, I think. Although I must admit, his technique is flawless."

"It didn't sound romantic to me," Naruto had said. He'd heard no romanticism in its stifling heaviness.

"He was too lenient with _rubato_. He used the pedal too much."

A woman from the row in front had turned to silence her with a glare. Naruto had not been sorry for it at all. The rest of the concert – two hours and a half – had slipped by without a word passed between them, Sakura with her legs crossed and smiling prettily.

0-0-0

Afterwards, Naruto had tried to seek Sasuke out. With the concert's conclusion had come a general chattering, the audience flowing out from the rows of seats and out through the doors like dirty water.

It had taken him ten minutes to find the backstage door. Sakura had trailed after him, earrings swinging, her high-heels clicking on the wooden floor. A slight drizzle had begun outside and she'd complained about the fact that she'd forgotten an umbrella.

A man at the door had stopped the two of them abruptly.

"Where are you going, sir?"

"I need to see Sasuke," Naruto had said. "I'm – a friend. His friend. We grew up together."

The voice had been polite, but as cold as snow: "Mr Uchiha does not like to have visitors right after a performance. He will be resting. He does not like to be disturbed at this time."

"Can you give him my name?" Naruto had pressed, feeling the ache within him grow almost dull to a throb.

The man had stared. "I really don't think – "

"Please just give him my name. Naruto Uzumaki. If he doesn't wish to see me right now, then I'll come back later when he's not resting."

Sakura had come up to him then and threaded a long arm coyly through his. The man at the door had looked at him doubtfully, but had left to deliver the name anyway.

"I thought he'd be expecting you," Sakura had whispered.

"I didn't tell him I was coming," Naruto had said.

When the man had come back, he had been alone. There had been a closed look on the carved, polite face. And Naruto had known what the reply would be, had felt it closing in on him slowly, like the tail-end of a frightening, half-forgotten dream.

"I'm sorry," the man had said to him then. "Mr Uchiha says he cannot recall anyone of your name. Perhaps I heard wrong? You said it was Naruto, wasn't it?"

Naruto had felt a terrible collapsing within him, and with it the ache had turned into pain.

"Naruto?" Sakura had said then, quietly confused.

"It doesn't matter," he'd whispered. He'd turned away.

0-0-0

After that night, the drinking had come more easily, and with his newfound money Naruto hadn't held back.

The first night or so, Sakura had berated him for it; but he hadn't listened, and in the end she hadn't really cared. She'd begun to stay longer and longer away, sometimes leaving for days without any warning. What Naruto did when she wasn't there hadn't seemed to bother her in the slightest. She had never been able to understand him, anyway; perhaps a year ago she would have tried, but since then she'd seen him drunk and drifting, unproductive, distant, and thoroughly unfaithful. She'd seen how changed he was after his three-month trip to London. And she'd seen the unfinished letters in his second desk drawer, seen the name he'd written more than fifty times, although she'd placed the papers back exactly where she'd found them and had never once brought up the subject openly.

To Naruto himself she'd tried to behave normally. But the resentment had been there, and over the years it had faded to a bland and vapid indifference – like a drop of black dye dispersing itself in water, becoming less potent but nevertheless still there.

0-0-0

Two weeks from that day had passed on by before Sasuke had suddenly appeared on Naruto's doorstep.

Naruto hadn't been drunk, but had been preparing to be; he'd lined up the whiskey on his study room desk. When the doorbell had rung, for the first time in a long while, he'd picked up a bottle and padded downstairs.

He'd opened the door – quietly, with the evening ghosting his neck – and the dark eyes, peering up from under dark lashes, had pinned him with one look to the opposite wall.

He'd stood there for a long time, just staring.

When Naruto had finally stood aside for him to enter, a fresh new snow had started to fall. He'd watched it come down out of the corner of his eye, tiny flakes as soft and as light as feather. He'd known they would settle on roofs, on cars, on branches. They were small and gentle, as complacent as dust – and yet Naruto had known that beneath their weighted silence many great trees would crumple, bowed down and broken by all of that white.

0-0-0

Sasuke hadn't stayed.

Neither had really expected him to, and although both had silently wished that that would not be the case, the fact had remained that nothing could be done about it, finally.

It had been unspoken. Even during their most intimate moments they had felt and maintained a certain distance between them, something Naruto had yearned desperately to change but, ultimately, in despair had not known how. Like two parallel lines they'd moved on through time, never getting any closer or any further away, simply existing, and that had been something unalterable.

That night, Naruto had stood there and watched as Sasuke had sat down at the kitchen table.

What had it been, exactly? A wariness, perhaps. A fear. Of each other, of maybe themselves. Neither had quite known what they were to the other anymore, and that inability to define had been terrifying to both, the uncertainty a venerable, gaping void.

Naruto had cleared his throat nervously. Unsure of how to break into the all-consuming quiet.

"Would – would you like some whiskey?" he'd said.

"No."

Sasuke's fingers had been curled into clenched fists on the table but his voice had been level, still the same timbre as Naruto had remembered it. Calm and cold as a porcelain mask.

Naruto's heart had soared at it briefly, and then had collapsed back down again.

"Tea? Coffee?"

"No."

"I think I have juice – "

"No, Naruto."

Naruto had looked down at his fingers, his voice getting lost somewhere in his windpipe. Caught in the discomfort of the moment he hadn't noticed the stiff way Sasuke had sat there, hadn't noticed the desperate composure within the black eyes.

He'd cleared his throat again.

"So w-what are you here for, then?" he'd said.

The reply had been quiet. "You came to my concert."

Naruto had found it difficult to look directly at him. "Yes, I did."

"Why did you come?"

"Because I wanted to see you."

Sasuke hadn't answered to that, had simply sat and stared down at his hands. Naruto had seen the thin band of gold stamped across the fourth finger of the left. It had reminded him of his own, which he never wore anymore; instead he kept it inside a coat pocket, slipping it on and off depending on the level of his guilt.

"I heard you were married," Naruto had started finally. "You did well. She's very pretty."

"She's an heiress," Sasuke had said shortly, as if that much he had thought to be obvious.

"Yamanaka, was it?"

"Her father owns a recording company."

He'd been staring so hard down at his own hands that he hadn't noticed the way that Sasuke had been shaking, the long fingers clenched like claws in bone-white fists.

"Are you staying here long?" he'd said at last.

Sasuke's reply had been low and deliberate, although there had been something lacking within his voice. It had been – just water, soft, anonymous water. Everything had seemed somehow to come back to water. It was the one thing in their lives that in itself could break nothing, but with time could corrode away everything they'd once had.

"Not very long," and the dark eyes had flitted away.

The silence had pained him, and he'd felt compelled to break it. "Congratulations on everything, you know. From what I heard from your concert you really play very – "

"Naruto, I don't want you to come to my concerts anymore."

Naruto had faltered slightly at the unexpected words. "What?"

The full force of those dark eyes had hit him hard.

"I don't want you to come to my concerts, Naruto. I am only going to stay here for another month or so. And then I'll go on to Paris for at least half a year. But I don't want you at any of my concerts in the meantime."

He hadn't expected it to hurt so much. He hadn't expected anything to hurt him so much. He'd set the whiskey bottle down on the table and wrapped his arms around himself, as if to consciously hold himself together.

"Why not?" he'd whispered.

"Because I don't want to see you."

"And why don't you want to see me, Sasuke?"

"Because I'm different now," Sasuke had said calmly, although the white-clenched fists had not stopped shaking. "I'm different, and you're different. We're not children anymore. I have a career now, and a reputation, and a wife, as do you."

"But I don't care!" Naruto had felt the words wrench from his soul. "It doesn't matter! All those things – I don't care, Sasuke!"

"You can't not care about the rest of the world, Naruto. And what we had – it was nothing, we both know that. In the end, it was nothing. You said so yourself."

The pain had blunted him, made the words rasp on his throat. There had been no choice but for him to agree.

So he'd said, "Of course. Nothing. We're nothing. Of course."

But later, when Sasuke had gone, Naruto had felt his knees give out. He'd sat himself down on his living room floor with his back pressed heavily against the wall. Outside the snow had fallen like powder, obliterating everything to a white complacency; and Naruto had watched it fill Sasuke's footprints, gently and lovingly erasing him from the world.

0-0-0

It was at about that time that Sasuke's name had begun to appear everywhere: in newspapers, on magazines, on the television, on billboards. From young girls' mouths as they'd chattered on buses. From serious old men discussing Rubinstein and Gilels.

Naruto had tried to ignore it, but the name wouldn't let him. It had followed him daily, chanted itself in his ears. He'd turn a corner at the local grocery and the name would be there, black on deep purple; daring him, trampling him, a billboard-sized bruise.

Sasuke hadn't tried to see him again.

Unspeakably, they'd realised things could not progress without consequences. Both were married, now. Sasuke had had a taste of success. Between them lingered the wake of eleven irreversible words – _You can't not care about the rest of the world, Naruto._

It would've been too easy to break everything that they knew apart.

Silence was better. Silence and waiting. The world would move on soon enough.

0-0-0

As it did move on.

Time gave way to more time, and still they waited. Winter passed away, and then Spring came; Spring passed away, and then Summer came. Sasuke had gone on to Paris, to London, Vienna, Berlin. He'd performed Mozart, Prokofiev, Bartok, Schumann. His Rachmaninov had been applauded, his Chopin proclaimed exquisite. With his travels his technique had inevitably improved, but he had not been able to lose that brooding depression, that lingering shadow to his every note; instead it had somehow managed to multiply, so that to those who knew him the yearning within his music was unmistakable, although no-one had been able to locate the cause.

Naruto himself had tried to write, but Sakura's novel had simply refused to write itself. Sakura in turn had gone to America for a month-long trip, and the tabloids were tittering over her overseas affair with an athlete, Lee Rock. Naruto had tried a half-hearted attempt at garnering revenge – and he'd started seeing a girl, Hinata Hyuuga, who was shy and stuttered but whose dark hair was soft and reminded him of someone he ached for daily.

Summer passed. Autumn came.

Autumn passed. Winter came.

And then, after a full year of waiting, Naruto finally received some good news in the mail.

0-0-0

The words had been simple – just one line of script. Over the years Sasuke had not lost his respect for silence, so that even his letters had seemed unwilling to break it.

_I divorced her. I'm coming back. Sasuke._

And Naruto had felt his heart almost stop.

At the time, he'd felt nothing but a boundless joy. It had been wild and almost unreasonable, but it had been a joy of some kind, nonetheless. Coming back, coming back – _I'm coming back,_ it had said. Naruto had not stopped to ask himself what those three words had meant; it had not seemed necessary, at the time. The thought that Sasuke would be returning soon was enough.

Only afterwards – years afterwards – had Naruto realised how sudden, how unrealistic, those six words had been.

_I divorced her._

_I'm coming back._

Coming back, to what?

They had seemed so full of promise at the time; so very much what Naruto had wanted, had _needed_, to hear. In those six meagre words Naruto had pinned all of his hopes, so that now, with all things said and done, they were the same six words that haunted him nightly, emerging from his dreams with a terrible clarity.

And now, Naruto would often think to himself, perhaps they'd never gotten any further than those last three words.

But there was nothing to be done; like always, there was nothing. Things would be as they always were. Nothing new, nothing changed. Let be, let be.

0-0-0

Sasuke had come back on the twenty-fourth, his plane touching down early in the morning, before dawn. Naruto had been there, waiting for him, barely controlling the beat of his heart.

They'd met each other in the lounge.

Sasuke's face had become less hard, but more brittle. He'd been wrapped in a dark coat, holding only one suitcase. The beautiful dark eyes had been smoky, unsure. For a moment they'd stood there as they always had, simply existing once more, hesitant; not able to breach the silent space between them because, with the relentless, roving days, it had built up too deeply with all things said and unsaid.

Naruto had seen the emotions flit over the pale face, each dancing lightly across, not leaving a mark.

"I..." Sasuke had said, and then he'd recovered. He'd nodded once, slightly, his face blank again.

Naruto had failed to keep the tremor from his voice. "You came back."

"Only temporarily. I won't stay here for too long."

"Then how long are you staying?" Naruto had asked.

"I don't know," had come the reply, and they'd left it at that.

0-0-0

They hadn't brought up the last time they'd met, had not brought up those words (_"We're nothing. Of course."_). Naruto had pretended they had never been uttered, although inwardly the two of them had both known; but to preserve things they had simply stepped around the words in between them, had not – or perhaps they'd not dared to – glance down.

For four months they'd stayed together that way. To Naruto those four months had passed in a sort of confused blur, so that in the evenings when Sasuke was asleep on their bed he'd sit up alone with all the lights off as if to try and hold on to the passing time.

Once, Sasuke had watched him sit there for over an hour before sitting up in bed himself.

"What are you thinking?" he'd asked, and Naruto had looked at him.

The question had come to him on a whim. "Why did you divorce her?"

He'd watched as Sasuke's eyes frosted over immediately, although there had been something strange in them as well.

"I just did," Sasuke had said coldly. "She asked me for a divorce and I agreed."

"Just like that?"

Sasuke had pulled the characteristic silence card then, simply looking at him with his dark eyes icily detached. He'd had his arms crossed over his bare chest. Naruto had been the first to look away.

"Sakura's going to a party tonight," he'd said at last. Evading the things that mattered, again. "I need to go early. I won't be back until tomorrow."

The reply had been a curt but still-silent nod.

"She's going to America again next week."

Sasuke had given him a look that had said, For how long?

"I don't know. Maybe two weeks, maybe three, maybe four. I don't know. She didn't tell me."

"Hn."

Naruto had paused, watching the twilight stretch like blue film across Sasuke's cheek. With the light that way he'd looked almost alien, in the way that sunlight over a broken column will seem alien, as if one were looking at it from a great distance through a telescope or some other glass instrument.

"You'll stay, won't you?"

Sasuke had given him a cool, closed look. "What are you talking about? I'm not going anywhere."

"No, I mean – once I've divorced Sakura."

The look had sharpened into one of surprise, before quickly smouldering out to a bitter, glacial anger. Sasuke's dark eyes had seemed to resound with such a fearful intensity that Naruto had lowered his own to avoid the cold, confrontational stare.

"What did you say, Naruto?"

"Well – isn't that why you sent me that letter, saying you'd divorced Ino Yamanaka? If I divorce Sakura Haruno now, things will... go back to how they would have been, wouldn't they? How they would've been if you hadn't have suddenly left the orphanage all those years ago? We'd have the life we've always wanted, wouldn't we?"

Sasuke had looked away from him but the stiffness had not left his pale jaw.

"Naruto," he'd said quietly, "Don't be naive. There's no such thing as 'how they would have been'. Nothing 'would have been'. It doesn't work that way."

It had hurt, but he had known he'd have to get used to it. "What do you mean?"

"You can't just pretend we never got married."

"But if we're both divorced, then wouldn't it be the same as if – "

"No." Sasuke had speared him with those dark, cold eyes. "It wouldn't be the same, Naruto. There are some things in life – some choices – that once made, can't be reversed. It wouldn't ever be the same."

"You can't say that," Naruto had argued, desperate. "You can't say that without first giving it a try – "

"Giving it a try? I'm giving it a try, Naruto, right now. Why else do you think I'm here with you?"

The words had shocked him and he'd leaned back to process them. He'd supposed that there was some hidden meaning to them, some meaning that Sasuke had tried to make him understand; but at the time, sitting there with Sasuke's eyes on him, he had not been able to work that meaning out.

He'd stuttered. "I don't – I don't know what you're – I – "

"It doesn't matter," Sasuke had said to him then, but the glint of disappointment in his eyes had been there. "It doesn't matter, Naruto. Just go back to sleep."

"But we'd have what we wanted," Naruto had said again at last. "If you stayed. We'd have what we've always wanted."

Sasuke had turned away from him and the blue light had paused on the top of his arms.

"It wouldn't be what I wanted, Naruto," he'd said.

And for the remainder of that night Naruto had just sat there, looking down at the bare skin of Sasuke's back – and he hadn't slept, and he'd known Sasuke hadn't slept either, even though he'd been lying there in the sheets on his side. And Naruto had known then, with the moonlight leaning on them, that although they were physically only a ruler's-length apart – that although Naruto could very easily have reached out and placed his hand in the small of Sasuke's back – he'd known then that the undisturbed air between their two bodies was a wider, more impossible distance than if they'd been standing at the opposite banks of a sea.

0-0-0

Spring had broken upon them suddenly, unexpected and uncalled for, in the manner that all Time must be.

The entirety of Winter had passed them by and with the onset of a different season they'd felt within themselves that ever-present, ever-human fear: the knowledge that Time was not enough, that it was running out, it was slipping away, it was fading from them and into the middle distance like a cloud.

This realisation had played itself out between them every night. The sex had started to become rougher, less delicate; they'd begun to skip the usual talk that had once preceded it, instead launching into the act without words or warning. Sasuke had begun to be unpredictable, turning up on Naruto's doorstep at strange hours of the night, not waiting to talk or even step over the threshold before beginning the frantic fumble for buttons.

They'd both known that it was all too good to last.

Perhaps that was why they'd been so careless – so fervent, so desperate to use every minute. Naruto himself had felt in their recklessness a certain sense of sinking despair, so that even during the white oblivion of release he had not felt himself entirely complete, felt that there was still something else for him to wish for.

Each night, they'd come together.

Each night, they'd part.

And each night they'd both understand, wordless, that that night together could very well be the last.

It had become just another restless game of waiting – except this time, they were waiting for something unnamed to jolt them out of their fragile sense of balance.

That something unnamed had come in March.

0-0-0

Sakura had returned from America in March. She'd stayed in New York for longer than four weeks, but Naruto hadn't complained. He'd received every one of her phone calls complacently, not listening to her words, simply letting them wash by him, each syllable of hers watered down and pointless and sliding off his body like rain.

He'd gone to the airport to pick her up. Exact symmetry of that time she'd done so for him.

She'd come in on an afternoon flight, wearing a new spring dress he had not seen before. Her hair had grown longer; she'd pinned it up. She'd been pretty in her blank, diluted way and when he'd handed her a takeaway cup of coffee outside she'd said to him, bluntly, "I want a divorce."

He'd stared at her numbly. She'd painted her eyelids green.

"What did you say?" he'd asked her, to stall.

"I want a divorce."

"What – now?"

She'd smiled at him and stepped out onto the curb, raising one arm to call the two of them a taxi. "I've phoned my lawyer during my time in America and he's preparing the necessary papers now. They should be ready for you to sign next week."

"Next week?"

"Yes."

"That's very soon," Naruto had pointed out, still reeling. "Why didn't you talk to me about it before you went to your lawyer? I don't – you don't even have my consent. What if I don't want a divorce?"

Sakura had looked him in the eye. "But you do want one, don't you? I know you do."

The taxi had arrived then, and Naruto had felt the words clog up in his throat. The drive back had been stagnant and utterly silent. As they'd approached the house Naruto had felt the moment appearing, looming up out at him like a face, as if he were being slowly but surely pitched forward into a fall that he, as a human, could not prevent at all.

On the steps to the house, he'd stopped and turned to her.

"What did you mean, when you said you knew that I wanted a divorce?"

Sakura had brushed a strand of hair from her eye and smiled up at him again, still prettily. "You and that Sasuke Uchiha – I know you've been sleeping with him for the past few months."

It had struck him more heavily than any physical blow. He'd stood there, staring. Not saying a word.

She'd laughed. "What, you thought I didn't know? I knew. I've known for over three years."

"You never said – "

"I didn't need to, Naruto. Now will you please open the door? I don't know where I've put my keys."

He'd unlocked the door for her and they'd gone inside. He'd set her suitcases on the living room floor, watched with a growing sense of helplessness as she'd gone to the kitchen and started up the espresso machine.

He'd followed her and then she'd turned around.

"So how have you been?" she'd asked him mildly then. "You can fill me in while I'm waiting for the machine to boot up."

"I don't want a divorce," Naruto had said, thinking of Sasuke's dark eyes. "You can't divorce me without consent, Sakura."

"I don't need your consent if I have evidence to prove that you've been unfaithful to me."

"What about you, then? You can't blame everything on me. You've been running off to that Lee Rock whenever you get the chance – he's probably seen you more this year than I have."

"That's irrelevant, Naruto. I want a divorce."

"Well, I'm not going to – "

"You can't have everything, Naruto," she'd said, before turning from him to make her coffee. "You can't have both Sasuke Uchiha and my money rolling in for you at the same time. One or the other – you're going to have to choose. I'm not going to keep wasting my life with you. I don't have the time for it."

"Sakura, I'm not going to let you divorce me."

She'd given him that familiar, bland green look.

"It doesn't matter anyway," she'd told him then. "The divorce is in progress already. I'm willing to split my inheritance with you, provided you agree to it. Lee and I are planning to marry in May."

"May? Sakura, this is something we need to talk through, it's not – "

"Unless you'd like a drawn-out, messy court-case? It would completely destroy Mr Uchiha's reputation, you know. He'd have no career left by the end of it all."

And that had been her hidden ace, and in the face of it Naruto had had no choice but to agree.

And so Sakura Haruno and Naruto Uzumaki had divorced in March, and by April he had moved himself out of her house. True to her word, Sakura had split him half of her substantial inheritance; and in early May, in a large, vibrant ceremony, Sakura Haruno had married Lee Rock. Barely a week later she'd moved to New York for good, and that was the last Naruto had ever heard of her.

0-0-0

For a very long time, Naruto had been afraid to tell Sasuke of his own divorce.

He hadn't quite known what he'd been afraid _of_ – perhaps he'd been afraid of those words again, the _It wouldn't be what I wanted, Naruto_. He'd been afraid of forcing Sasuke away. There was something within him that was terrified of that, terrified of losing Sasuke Uchiha; and he didn't quite know how to control that terror, or even what that terror really meant.

In late April Sasuke had suddenly disappeared, leaving only a short note on the kitchen bench to explain.

_Going back to Europe for a few weeks. Don't call._

Naruto hadn't called, although he'd been tempted to more than once. In any case Sasuke hadn't left a number. When he'd come back again, a full seven-and-a-half weeks later, Naruto had wanted desperately to ask but hadn't found the strength within him to do so.

In early August Naruto had come home with the groceries to see Sasuke hunched over their shared bed, packing.

Outside, there had been a light Summer rain. Naruto's hair had been wet, as well as the tops of his shoulders, the moistness dusted over his form in an entire palette of darkened hues. He'd opened Sasuke's apartment door and seen the suitcase sitting there in the bedroom doorway. He'd gone to the bedroom. And the terror had come back to him in a rush, although he'd put the groceries down on the floor gently and not said anything for a very long time. When he'd finally worked up the courage to open his mouth, the words had been predictable and nothing at all new.

"What are you doing?"

The reply had been quiet. "I'm packing."

"Why?"

"I'm leaving for a while."

"Again?"

Sasuke had straightened up to cross over to the chest of drawers. "Yes."

He'd waited for the explanation, but none had come. Sasuke had simply started packing again, shifting the drawer's contents into the suitcase.

"Where are you going, then?"

"Back to Europe."

"What for?"

"I have one or two concerts in Germany."

Naruto had blinked. In the haze of all the time gone by he'd almost forgotten that Sasuke still played the piano. The last time that he'd heard Sasuke play seemed an era ago, so distant within his memory that he'd felt as if it were trapped in his mind at the end of a very long tunnel.

"When will you come back? Is that why you left last time?"

Sasuke had paused in his packing to look at him. To Naruto's surprise, the dark eyes had been tinged with guilt. "You shouldn't have let her divorce you, Naruto. Especially not because of me."

The air had left Naruto's lungs in a rush.

"What?" he'd said.

"You heard me." And then the coal-black eyes had bent coldly away once more. "I don't know when I'll be back this time."

"What do you mean? Wait! You _will_ come back, won't you? Won't you, Sasuke? You have to come back!"

Sasuke's dark form had pushed on past him to the door. "Of course I'll come back. Don't try to call me while I'm in Europe."

"I – "

"Don't come and find me, either," Sasuke had said. "I'll come back when I'm ready."

"What do you mean, 'when you're ready'? When you're ready for what? What about _me_? Sasuke, wait – don't go yet – I don't understand why you – wait! Please!"

But Sasuke hadn't waited, and in the end there would've been nothing that would have been able to stop him. Naruto had stood on the doorstep watching with the rain from his hair dripping onto his cheeks, his mouth frozen open, his gut twisting painfully. A taxi had pulled up and then Sasuke had gone. In moments there had been nothing of him left but the imprint of his silhouette in Naruto's mind, a memory only, lighter than air.

Naruto had left the doorway and gone to sit by himself at the kitchen table.

The abrupt weight of loneliness had beaded on his shoulders and dragged him down towards the earth.

And he'd wanted, so badly –

– to get up, to do something irrational, do anything at all; to jump out the window and run, run, _run_, bend over and scream into the pattering rain until his lungs gave out like two deflated balloons – just to feel like he was doing something, _something_, something else in his life other than always waiting –

Perhaps they'd never gotten any further than those fatal three words.

_I'm coming back._

_I'm coming back._

Let be, let be.

* * *

_The reminiscence comes_

_Of sunless dry geraniums_

_And dust in crevices,_

_Smells of chestnuts in the streets,_

_And female smells in shuttered rooms,_

_And cigarettes in corridors_

_And cocktail smells in bars..._

(T.S. Eliot: _Rhapsody on a Windy Night_)

* * *

**A/N: Eh, the two T.S. Eliot quotes don't really have much to do with the storyline, except that they suggest to me the strange and eerie way that memories have – and since this entire story is pretty much Naruto's memories, I thought, well, they're a bit relevant. ...Alright, fine, I put them in because I just love Eliot's images. Yay for Objective Correlative! Hopefully it gave some sense of atmosphere to the story!**

**Another thing – I hope I did not completely abuse Sakura. She's not a likable character, but she just wants to be happy. In the same way as Naruto or Sasuke, she just wants to be happy. And sometimes that happiness calls for being selfish.**

**Everyone is selfish, once in a while.**

**Ooh, and I'm well aware that (according to Australian laws, anyway) you can only divorce officially after a year's separation. But, well, I decided to... erm... speed up Naruto and Sakura's divorce, because otherwise it would have taken way too long for things to happen.**

**Final thing – is my characterisation of the two protagonists believable? Maybe I'm just paranoid... but I want to make sure they're realistic. Sasuke is a bit of an enigma I know, but remember he's a (hopefully) complex human character with regrets and dreams and guilt and all those yummy emotions. His motives aren't always clear... but hopefully that's alright? They'll clear themselves up in Part III. Let me know what you think! I really value your opinion!**

**Please don't forget to review!**


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